A
aerogi
Guest
First I'd like to point out, that the results so far we got from this mission (both Cassini and the lander) are far better than what I've expected before, so I am not one of those who are utterly dissappointed... But anyway I have a few questions about this mission:<br /><br />1/Cassini has a power supply from which it can survive for many years (I've read somewhere even 200 years!). So why didn't they equipped the Huygens probe with a similar power supply so it could had a little longer life on this moon, maybe long enough to be able to submit more Megabytes of data?<br /><br />2/The Voyagers were able to take fairly good detailed pictures of all of Saturn major moons during a flyby passage. So we have Cassini in orbit (!), yet it only seems to take pictures when it comes very close of a moon. It does take some others pics, but mostly very distant. It's hard to explain what I mean, but I hope you get my point.<br /><br />3/Is there a possibility, after a few years of exploration of the Saturn system, that the spacecraft could be 'thrown out of this system' to go back and travel to the Jupiter system and try an orbit insertion there? That might be too difficult, but maybe just a flyby to one of the moons and have the most detailed pics ever of Europa or Io?<br /><br />4/ point 3 would probably be a 'no' for answer, so what are the possibilities at the end of this mission? I understand 'plunging' into Titan is not an option (contamination reasons), so most likely it will be a Saturn 'plunge'. But I'd rather would like to see them doing a 'manoeuvre' to try to 'soft' land it on another moon, like they did with the NEAR mission. Maybe on that strange 'walnut' like moon? And taking pics during the approach, and with a bit of luck it might be able to continue taking pics after the landing.<br /><br />5/Cassini has such an advanced radar mapping system, but for some reason, to my untrained eye, I can't make up anything from these pics. I don't know what colours should make the elev